Ontario-headquartered Cyclic Materials is actively sourcing hard disks from ITAD firms for its magnet extraction and rare earth processing operations. The company is planning to expand with multiple facilities in the U.S. and Canada in the coming years.

The Kingston, Ontario-based company brings in end-of-life hard drives and a variety of other magnet-containing products, extracts the magnets and uses a hydrometallurgical process to convert them into mixed rare earth oxides and other substances.

“That mixed rare earth oxide is the raw material that you would need to make a magnet again and put it back into the economy for different applications,” said Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO of Cyclic Materials, in an interview with E-Scrap News.

Cyclic’s first facility, commissioned in September 2023, is capable of processing about 2,200 pounds of devices per hour, or nearly 18 million pounds per year, using the magnet removal process the company calls Mag-Xtract. The company’s separate hydrometallurgical process, which completed a trial run in 2022, has an early capacity of 22,000 pounds per year.

“Our next step is to scale up both technologies to the next level, in the next one year,” Ghahreman said. Cyclic anticipates starting up a commercial demonstration plant for the hydrometallurgical process in the second quarter of 2024. Ghahreman estimates Cyclic will develop five or six locations in the U.S. and Canada, where the Mag-Xtract equipment will be deployed. He anticipates the company will operate one large hub where the hydrometallurgical process will be centralized.

Ghahreman launched Cyclic in 2021, and the company has since raised $33 million (U.S. dollars) in funding, largely from private investment and venture funds, with about $3 million from Sustainable Technology Development Canada, a Canadian government agency. Its advisory team currently includes Adam Shine, CEO of e-scrap processor Sunnking, as well as multiple current and former executives at battery recycling firm Li-Cycle.

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Read full article at E-Scrap News / Resource-Recycling.com